uld be proud
of him.

Proud she was; she, a worn old woman sitting in the shadow of death,
proud of a dry skeleton and a handful of dust under a crape pall.
And they had parted in the hey-day of youth, young and ardent, with
arms passionately loth to untwine.

What did her eyes seek beneath the pall, the plumes, the flag?
Be sure she saw him laid there at his manly length, inert, with
cheeks only a little paler than they had been as he stood looking
down into her eyes a moment before he strode away. In truth, the
searchers, opening his grave in Quebec, had found a few bones, and a
skull from which, as they lifted it, a musket-ball dropped back into
the rotted coffin; these, and a lock of hair, tied with a leathern
thong.

They did not bring him ashore to her. Even after forty years his
return must be for a moment only; his country still claimed him.
The letter beside her was from Governor Clinton, written in
courtliest words, telling her of the grave in New York prepared for
him beneath the cenotaph set up by Congress many years before.

Again a bell rang sharply, the paddles ceased backing and ploughed
forward again. To the sound of muffled drums he passed down the
river, and out of her sight for ever.

II.

THE PHANTOM GUARD.

Just a hundred years have passed since the assault on Pres-de-Ville.
It is the last day of 1875, and in the Citadel above the cliff the
Commandant and his lady are holding a ball. Outside the warm rooms
winter binds Quebec. The St. Lawrence is frozen over, and the
copings and escarpments of the old fortress sparkle white under a
flying moon.

The Commandant's lady had decreed fancy dress for her dancers, and
further, that their costumes shall be those of 1775. The Commandant
himself wears the antique uniform of the Royal Artillery, and some of
his guests salute him in the very coats, and carry the very swords,
their ancestors wore this night a hundred years ago. They pass up
the grand staircase hung with standards--golden leopards of England,
golden irises of France, the Dominion ensign, the Stars and Stripes--
and come face to face with a trophy, on the design of which Captain
Larne of the B Battery has spent some pious hours. Here, above
stacks of muskets piled over drums and trumpets, is draped the red
and black "rebel" pennant so that its folds fall over the escutcheon
of the United States; and against this hangs a sword, heavily craped,
with the letters R.I.P. b